Critics call for police oversight with teeth
VOLUNTEERS: Board can’t inquire, subpoena
As protests over George Floyd’s death swept the nation, activists in Houston cried out for police reform. Among their demands: Give us an independent police watchdog.
One already exists, city officials said: Houston’s Independent Police Oversight Board.
But the board lacks meaningful power, with one longtime civil rights activist calling it “window dressing.”
Houston’s Independent Police
Oversight Board, which reviews investigations completed by the Houston Police Department’s internal affairs division, meets at police headquarters. It cannot launch its own inquiries or accept complaints directly from civilians. Members are forbidden from discussing any of the cases they review — even with the mayor or other public officials. Its sparse website includes instructions on how to file a complaint with police, but little information on the board’s own work. It lacks the power to subpoena documents or compel officer testimony. It’s a volunteer body appointed by the mayor and has no professional staff. And when members of the oversight board make policy recommendations, they often never find out what happens to their suggestions, current and former members told the Chronicle.
“It’s clear if we had additional clout, we could do more and better work,” said Gerald Birnberg, a Houston attorney who serves on the oversight board. “It feels like we’re working in the dark.”
As America reckons with racism and calls to address police violence, critics say Houston’s police oversight board is inadequate. Those who argue against change say the board has sufficient power and lacks training to investigate or issue subpoenas.
Longtime Houston activist Johnny Mata said Floyd’s death after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes revealed a “tinderbox of repressed resentment” and renewed calls for a more robust board.
“It’s been perceived as nothing but window dressing to appease communities of color,” Mata said.
Opposition from chief
But Chief Art Acevedo pooh-poohed the idea of expanding the board’s powers in a back-and-forth with marchers on the issue during the protests in Houston earlier this month. It doesn’t need subpoena power, he said, because the police department already provides all the information its members request. He noted that the board’s members also sit on HPD’s discipline committee and called the police oversight board “the eyes and ears of the community.”
But critics — including past and current members of the IPOB — say the watchdog group is hobbled by state law, union contracts, a lack of infrastructure and a narrow focus.
The board reviews HPD’s completed investigations into possible excessive force, the discharge of a firearm and other major incidents. Its official purpose is to “review internal investigations to determine if the investigation was sufficient,” according to the city’s website.
The board can make recommendations to the chief related to disciplinary action, policies and training, but the chief has the final say.
While members are forbidden from discussing the cases they review, some of their recommendations became public in a police brutality lawsuit filed after the 2012 police killing of Kenny
Releford.
HPD was forced to turn over internal affairs files related to several shootings, with recommendations filed by the IPOB and its earlier incarnation. When the board reviewed the July 2012 shooting of Rufino Lara, two members of the panel wrote notes urging de-escalation training.
The officer should not have “fired her gun on someone who was not pointing or near to pointing a dangerous weapon toward her,” one member wrote. “Better training needs to be provided.”
The majority agreed with the department’s conclusions, but all checked off boxes indicating training had not been sufficient.
The police department also maintains discretion in deciding what records to release to the oversight board, though board member Kristin Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, said members “see all documents associated with any case” that comes to the board.
She said the public deserves transparency, but said granting the board subpoena power is a “red herring” and would not give members “the ability to tell if a cop is lying.”
Birnberg said board members do not have unfettered, immediate access to all the records they request. He recalled seeing cases where board members were told obtaining an autopsy would take four months — far longer than the twoweek period the board’s panels have to review individual cases.
“I don’t know if the chief is aware of the structural impediments to the panels getting meaningful information at the time they’re supposed to be ruling on the cases,” he added.
About 150 cases a year
Former Mayor Annise Parker said Houston has had some form of civilian watchdog group for decades. The current iteration was formed in 2011. Parker said her administration tried to make it more diverse and to make it easier for citizens to file complaints with the police department.
“It’s an insufficient tool, but a helpful tool,” Parker said. “Could it be improved? Absolutely.”
The website says there are 29 board members and alternates. Members include teachers, lawyers and civil rights advocates. They are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by City Council. The body is divided into four panels, each of which meets about once a month to review three or four cases. One member estimated the group reviews about 150 cases a year. The heads of each panel also sit on HPD’s Administrative Disciplinary Committee, which reviews punishments against officers accused of misconduct.
The group’s reviews are limited to the disciplinary cases and use-of-force cases that HPD’s internal affairs division brings to them — a protocol that past and current board members say is not sufficient.
“Right now, the perceived mission of IPOB is simply to review recommendations made by the IAD, and to either agree or disagree with them on the way to (discipline committee). That’s it,” Birnberg said. “That is supposed to be enough to permit us to be the explanation to the community that there is some agency looking at these files. And there is. But its role, in my view, is too limited.”
Those who don’t see a need for change say the board’s purpose is primarily to ensure the chief holds officers to account. Giving the board more power would “politicize every single police activity” and allow members to “punish officers based on the emotion of the event,” contended Councilman Mike Knox, a former Houston police officer. Investigation, disciplinary action and prosecution are not the job of the board, he said.
If the board decides that HPD’s investigation was insufficient, the internal affairs commander can dispute the decision, sending the matter to an assistant chief or the police chief. If the chief disagrees with the board — which happens about 5 to 10 percent of the time, board chairman Marvin Hamilton has said — he meets with the city’s inspector general “in an effort to reach an agreement,” according to the city’s website. The inspector general reports to he city attorney, who along with the police chief is appointed by the mayor.
While the city’s website says board members will report back to the mayor and the City Council’s public safety committee, members said they are not allowed to discuss their work or pass along findings.
Joe Gamaldi, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said the board already has “a wide range of powers.” The union is not opposed, though, to Councilman Edward Pollard’s proposal to create an “office of police oversight and accountability” within the city’s legal department. The office would set up a website to allow residents to browse complaints of officer misconduct and include a mechanism for civilians to “report grievances” related to HPD.
Still, the union opposes allowing the oversight board to do its own investigations. Gamaldi said he would consider that proposal if board members were required to have investigative backgrounds.
“If you had just been robbed, would you want someone who had never investigated or dealt with a robbery ever before to investigate that?” he said.
‘Less power than most’
Corresponding groups in other Texas cities and around the country have review powers that go beyond the ones granted to Houston’s oversight board, including 35 groups that have various levels of subpoena power, according to a list compiled by the National Association of Citizen Oversight of Law Enforcement.
“The Houston model, it’s one that has less power than most,” said Margo Frasier, the group’s vice president and a former Travis County sheriff and police monitor for the city of Austin.
Jane Foreman, co-chair of the Houston Democratic Socialists of America, said a board without subpoena power “almost has no power at all,” and questioned the merits of allowing the mayor and council members to appoint and approve members after they had accepted campaign contributions from the police union.
Even with certain reforms, Foreman said the board is unlikely to compel change within the police department.
“We have seen more than 50 years of organizing for police oversight boards across the country, and not one has substantially modified the role or behavior of police,” they said.
Olugbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress who has studied police oversight, said the push from activists to “defund the police” stems from this lack of effectiveness . “If these oversight agencies were effective and strong, we probably would have seen tangible results … and there wouldn’t be this call for it,” Ajilore said.
On Wednesday, Houston City Council soundly rejected a proposal from Council Member Letitia Plummer to grant the board subpoena power and give it $1 million to conduct its own investigations. The funds would have come out of HPD’s budget through Plummer’s plan to eliminate vacant positions within the department.
Former board member Philip Hilder backed the idea of funding the board’s operations, arguing that it needs a full-time executive director and paid staff to handle the board’s “many responsibilities.”
“The mandate is quite broad in terms what is expected of (IPOB’s volunteers),” he said. “It’s very much like drinking out of a fire hose.”
Mayor Sylvester Turner opposed Plummer’s plan to divert HPD funding to the oversight board and other areas, though he said officials should “seriously take a look at (the board) and see how it needs to be revamped.” He declined to answer whether the board should receive subpoena power, saying his recently announced police reform task force would “explore” the idea.
But former Houston police chief Charles McClelland questioned how an independent review board would be able discipline an officer under state law and union contracts that limit civilians’ power to levy sanctions on police. He said grand juries and civil service commissions are the only way for civilians to impose meaningful sanctions on officers.
“The community needs to understand a lot of the things they are asking for will require changes in state law or union contracts,” McClelland said.
Houston attorney Joe Melugin, who spent three years suing the Houston Police Department over the shooting death of Kenny Releford, said he disagrees with those who say holding police legally accountable police should be left to the district attorney.
“Until the city fires police officers for abuses of power and unjustified violence, and until the DA prosecutes police the same as any of the rest of us, then the problems with police abuses of power will persist regardless of changes to the IPOB,” he said. “We must change how the police force exists and operates in our city.”